Royal Palm Beach personal injury lawyer

Palm Beach County publishes the list of streets that produce its worst crashes. Four Royal Palm Beach roads are on it, and what they have in common is speed.

The Palm Beach Transportation Planning Agency maintains a High Injury Network: the roadway segments carrying the heaviest concentration of fatal and serious injury crashes in the county. Its 2025 Vision Zero Action Plan puts that network at 130 corridors covering 276 miles and reports that 38 percent of fatal crashes and 36 percent of serious injury crashes happen on 4 percent of the county’s streets. Ninety-five percent of the network is posted at 35 miles per hour or higher. Just over half of that network is state road rather than city street.

The agency publishes that network as mapped data, scored four separate ways — all crashes, pedestrian crashes, bicycle crashes, and crashes in the dark or on unlit roadway. A road that qualifies on all four is the worst case the county measures. These are the Royal Palm Beach streets on the 2025 network, with what the data flags and who is responsible for the pavement.

Ninety-five percent of the countywide network is posted at 35 or higher. In Royal Palm Beach every corridor on it is posted 40 or higher, and three of the four reach 50 or more. State Road 7 runs eight lanes at a posted 50. Southern Boulevard runs up to 55. Okeechobee Boulevard widens to eight lanes at 50 through the village.

Speed changes the claim, not only the crash. At these speeds a collision that would be a soft-tissue case on a 30 mile per hour street becomes a surgical one, and the injuries are often bad enough that the policy limits on the other driver’s car run out before the medical bills do. That turns the case into a coverage hunt: your own uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage, which may stack across the vehicles on your policy, and any commercial policy sitting behind the other vehicle. How Florida uninsured motorist coverage works, and when it stacks.

The Sheriff’s Office district that polices the village keeps its substation at 11498 Okeechobee Boulevard, on the corridor the county flags on every measure it scores. The most common fatal and serious injury crashes on the network are angle, left turn and rear end collisions.

Angle and left-turn crashes are the ones insurers fight, because who had the right of way is rarely settled by the damage alone. That is where Florida Statute 768.81 does its work: a claimant found more than 50 percent responsible recovers nothing, and below that line the recovery is cut by the share assigned. An adjuster asking about your speed and your line of sight at Okeechobee Boulevard and State Road 7 is not making conversation. What the 51 percent bar covers, and what it does not.

Rear-end crashes carry the opposite problem. Fault is usually conceded and the fight moves to the injury: whether a neck or back complaint came from this crash or from something older. That argument is won or lost in the medical records, which is why the 14-day deadline in Florida Statute 627.736(1)(a) ends more claims than any dispute about fault. How Paul handles a Palm Beach County car accident claim.

Three of the four carry a dark-roadway flag as well: Okeechobee Boulevard, Southern Boulevard, and Crestwood Boulevard, which is six lanes at a posted 40. Where lighting, sight lines or signal timing contributed to a crash, the question stops being only about the two drivers.

Three practical facts about a Royal Palm Beach claim that are easier to establish now than six months from now.

The hospital. Florida has verified only two Level I trauma centers in Palm Beach County — Delray Medical Center and St. Mary’s Medical Center — on the Department of Health’s trauma center list updated July 23, 2026. Palm Beach County Fire Rescue splits them geographically: St. Mary’s covers traumatic injuries north of Southern Boulevard, Delray Medical Center covers the south. Royal Palm Beach straddles that line, because Southern Boulevard runs through the south end of the village. Which trauma center you are taken to can depend on which side of Southern Boulevard the crash happened on. That matters to the claim because the trauma record is the spine of it: the imaging, the admission note and the discharge summary are what an adjuster and later a jury read. If you went by ambulance, the 14-day treatment deadline took care of itself. The claims that die on that deadline belong to people who declined transport, felt worse on day three, and waited. Pain that starts days after a crash, and the order coverage pays your medical bills in.

The road. Who owns the pavement decides who can be sued if the pavement helped cause the crash. State Road 7 and Southern Boulevard are state roads under FDOT. Crestwood Boulevard is a county road, and Okeechobee Boulevard is partly county and partly state. A claim against any of them runs through Florida Statute 768.28, and the rules there are unforgiving: the claim must be presented in writing within three years, recovery is capped at $200,000 per person and $300,000 per incident unless the Legislature passes a claim bill, and the agency has six months to respond before silence counts as a denial. One wrinkle that is easy to get wrong — a claim against a city or a county goes to that government only, while a claim involving a state road also has to be presented to the Department of Financial Services. Three years sounds generous until you put it beside the two-year deadline for the underlying injury suit. Every deadline that can end a Florida injury claim, with the statute for each.

The courthouse. Royal Palm Beach is in the Fifteenth Judicial Circuit. Under Florida Statute 34.01(1)(c)3, county court handles actions filed on or after January 1, 2023 where the amount in controversy is $50,000 or less; anything above that is a circuit court case. Circuit civil sits at the Main Judicial Complex, 205 North Dixie Highway in West Palm Beach — downtown, where Paul’s office is. The branch courthouses sit in Palm Beach Gardens, Delray Beach and Belle Glade. Most claims settle and never see a courtroom, but the venue is why a Royal Palm Beach case is a West Palm Beach case, and why having the attorney in that courthouse’s own city is not a small thing. What Paul Shalhoub handles across Palm Beach County, and the trial background behind it.

All frequently asked questions